Irken Anatomy
by InvaderJes11
Summary: My long awaited Zim and House crossover! Something goes wrong with Zim's leg on a field trip to New Jersey, and guess what the nearest hospital is? Princeton-Plainsboro! Involves Jes and Hey, AKA Rebecca and Matt.
1. Zim In the House!

**Weehoo for Zim & House!! I finally started it!! GIR is eventually going to attack Cuddy, based on a drawing I... er... drew. The beginning's a little melodramatic, though.**

It had happened quickly. Too quickly.

Rebecca climbed into the back of the ambulance, barely knowing what was going on around her, on the verge of screaming. What was going on again?!

Oh, yeah... Zim. She glanced to her left. There he was, on the stretcher, looking as if he was in an immense amount of pain.

This school trip to New Jersey had been a bad idea all along, but Zim insisted on coming, on seeing "how the people in this strange land lived." The last part being a direct quote. Rebecca had rolled her eyes at this.

As said before, though, it had happened so quickly – one minute, the class was standing in a group in the museum, taking the rather boring tour, the next, Zim collapsed on the floor.

Holding his leg.

That was all Rebecca knew of the situation so far. Something must be horribly wrong with his leg.

The truth? That was all the paramedics new so far, too.

The medics informed Rebecca and Matt (who she had only just realized was still here) to strap themselves into a seat as the ambulance truck began to pull out of the parking lot.

A job for Sherlock Holmes? I think not. Well, sort of. Well, not really. WELL... you know what I mean!! BRING IN DR. GREGORY HOUSE!! :P

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"We haven't figured out exactly what's happened yet, but it's probably a simple blablabla blah blibbidyblah..."

The last few words were gibberish to Matt and Rebecca, who were listening intently, despite the complicated medical terms.

"Is he ok?!" Rebecca frantically asked the random doctor. Glancing at her nametag, she then realized her name.

"Right now, you mean?" Dr. Cameron countered.

"NO, I mean yesterday. YES now!!"

"Geez, sorry!" Cameron replied. "Yes, he's just resting. He's not in nearly as much pain as before. You guys can go in to see him, if you want."

On that note, the two kids burst through the door into Zim's hospital room.

"Zim!!"

"Are you ok?!"

"What happened back there?!"

"Tell us EVERYTHING!!"

"AHH!" Zim yelled. "Too many questions! You humans are so hyperactive!!"

He was lying on the hospital bed in a plain white gown, which looked less odd on an Zim than it would have on anybody else. Heck , he wore a dress every day.

"Sorry." Matt apologized.. "But seriously... answer ALL those questions!!"

"Well, I'm not okay. Why in the name of Irk would I be okay?!"

Rebecca sighed. "It's an Earth thing, Zim. We mean, 'Are you not in an insane amount of pain anymore?'"

"Well, no, I'm not. But I still can't move my leg –" Zim paused to try, without success. "Ow."

Everybody sighed and regained their composure. Rebecca and Matt took a seat in a couple of chairs. There was a long silence in which everybody just... thought. They were still in shock.

"Oh my..." Rebecca trailed off. "I just thought of something."

"Yeah?" Zim and Matt asked simultaneously.

"Irken..." Rebecca whispered.

"What?" Zim said.

"Irken!" Rebecca yelled. "You're Irken!! I'm surprised they haven't noticed that you're GREEN yet. What are we going to do when they actually examine you?!"

As if on cue, the door opened and a man carrying a cane took one step into the room, then halted.

"Shoot." Matt whispered.


	2. Shall I Explain?

Dr. House stared at the nearly normal scene before him for a good five seconds, noting that everybody looked quite nervous.

"Ok..." he began, "I'm no dermatologist, but I know skin's not supposed to be that GREEN."

Another long silence.

"It's a _skin condition."_ The green kid made an obvious excuse.

House lifted one eyebrow.

Zim did the same.

Rebecca noted how similar the looks they were giving each other were.

"Uh..." House started again, "I'm your doctor, so you'd be better off telling me your real reason, Froggy-Boy."

"My name is ZIM!!" Was his annoyed reply. "And I have the right to remain silent."

Rebecca slapped her forehead. "Could you just NOT talk, Zim?"

"Being a doctor," Matt noted, "Wouldn't you be inclined to actually _believe _a patient when they give a reasonable explanation?"

"I've trained myself not to." House said half-sarcastically. "Plus, there _is _no skin condition – on this PLANET – that makes your skin turn green. There's a blood thing, but still..."

Zim's eyes widened. "I'm human!!" He instinctively screamed.

A long silence followed.

"I didn't doubt you were..." House began, "Until now."

"Until now?!" Rebecca screamed. "Look, we shouldn't even be here, so can we just –"

Interrupting Rebecca's sentence, something burst into the room, almost knocking House over. It began to bounce off the walls, just barely missing everybody's heads, screaming "WEEEEHOOOOO!!!"

"GIR?!" Zim screamed, confused.

At Zim's command, the blur of black and green halted in the center of the room and saluted. "Yes, SIR!!"

"What in the name of the Tallests are you DOING here?!"

"Weeelll..." GIR began, "I got this distress signal, and it came from this museum place, but those guys told me you went HERE, so I just... erm... followed their directions!" He smiled a puppy-robot smile. Rebecca couldn't help but giggle.

"And I KNOW green dogs don't TALK!!" House yelled.

"Oh, yeah," GIR began, "Well, I'm actually a ROBOT!" He began to unzip the costume.

"GIR, no!!" Matt and Zim yelled simultaneously.

But it was too late. GIR's true SIR form was revealed.

"You... what... are... you?!" House inquired quietly.

"Don't you listen?" GIR began to explain, despite everybody's motions to shut the heck up. "I'z a ROBOT!"

House's eyes shifted to Zim. "And you...?"

Matt and Rebecca sighed. "I guess..." Matt began. "You... you can tell him."

"I..." Zim began confidently. "am an elite soldier of the planet Irk."

"So... like, an alien?" House finished expectantly.

"Yes." Zim said. "'Like' an alien."

"Heh..." Rebecca giggled nervously, "So... can ya fix him?"

[A/N: Talk about awkward!]

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Rebecca was out of breath. She, Zim and Matt had just explained basically their whole lives to Dr. House.

"One thing still confuses me, though..." Rebecca asked the doctor. "Why do believe us?!"

"When you've seen as much as I have?" House replied matter-of-factly, "It's not that hard."

"Ok..." Matt mumbled. "You're not going to tell anybody, are you?"

"Do you want me to?"

"No."

"Then yes."

"NO!!" All three aliens said in unison.

"Kidding!" House assured them, still snickering a little. "You're so jumpy. Now..." He began as he stood up from the chair he'd taken a seat in, "Let's find out what's actually wrong with you, besides that stupidly confident attitude I've been noticing."

"Oh," Zim retorted, "And I suppose you just need that cane for your little sarcasm problem?"

House paused, a smirk on his face. "Touché." he noted. "I'm actually a drug addict. But, oh, gasp! Don't tell my boss!"

Zim paused confusedly as House began to pull the sheets off of him. "Uh... you need a cane because you're a drug addict...?"

"Never mind. Does this hurt?" House said as he lifted Zim's leg a tad.

"YyyyESS!!" Zim whined loudly. "Arg!! What are you trying to do, HUMAN?!"

"Find out what 'in Irk' is wrong with you." House said sarcastically. [A/N: How in character.] He felt around a bit more as Zim prepared himself to leap out of the bed at any moment.

"Just calm down, Zim." Rebecca assured him. "He's not actually going to hurt you."

"HE JUST DID." Zim replied.

"Yeeeaahh..." House drawled, "Shut up. Both of you."

After a few more minutes of examining and various "Ooh's" and "Ow's" from Zim, House finally decided.

"Well, there's nothing all that unusual, but it did feel like there might be some swelling. Unless that's some alien organ."

"I have no organs in my leg, filthy human." Zim spat the last few words.

"Ooh, how provocative." House joked. "Careful, or you might make me smack you with my drug-addict cane."

"Can we get on with this without the stupid sarcastic remarks?!" Matt inquired, "irked". [A/N: LOL, pardon my French!]

"I think we should get an X-Ray." House continued, ignoring Matt's comment. "Or, better yet, an MRI. That'll show anything, and clearer. Unless you have some kind of alien allergy to MRI's." He was only half-kidding.

"MRI?" Zim inquired.

"Magnetic Resonance Imaging." House explained. "Shoots out a magnetic field to get a good view of your insides."

"Irkens aren't allergic to _magnets._" Zim answered, as if it should have been obvious.

"Then what are we waiting for?" Rebecca asked. "To the cat-scanner! The sooner we find out what's wrong, the sooner we get out of here..."


	3. Magnetic Resonance Irken

**Ok, I'm no doctor, so please excuse me if I make any medical mistakes. :3 And sorry this took so long!!**

Zim, now sitting on the bench outside the MRI machine, grumbled to himself. "Stupid hospital… stupid Earth… I'm _fine_… these so-called doctors think they know everything…"

Rebecca, listening to his irritated rant, noticed that he was unconsciously rubbing his sore leg. She smiled to herself, mostly out of pity. Fine? She thought not. Hopefully it was nothing serious, though…

Matt, standing next to Rebecca, followed her amused gaze. Honestly! Zim was so stubborn. He did have to admit, however, that this was already getting interesting. It would be pretty intriguing to find out what was wrong with him -- hopefully something they could fix; but whatever it was, it was a kind of mystery. Matt liked mysteries.

And, finally, Dr. House, the one who everybody else in the room reluctantly admitted they were dependent on, was at the MRI controls behind the glass. He had one finger on the intercom button and seemed to be talking, although the others couldn't hear him behind the glass. Every now and then he would stop and roll his eyes. Eventually, he took his finger off, a look of pure triumph on his face, and opened the door.

"Well, I've got permission to start the machine, so go ahead and --" He was cut off by Matt.

"Don't they have technicians that do that?" Matt asked cautiously.

House, slightly irritated, replied "Yes, but I was just talking to them, and they gave up after much kvetching on my part. I'm now authorized to start the machine."

Rebecca smiled, amused. "You just earned points by me for your Yiddish vocabulary."

"Good to know…" House trailed off, unable to come up with anything witty to throw into the conversation. "Okay, the two humans -- or at lease _partial _humans -- need to come out of the room with me now." He began to leave, Rebecca and Matt trailing behind him.

Halfway through the door, Rebecca paused and glanced at Zim. She gave him an attempt at a reassuring smile (although it came out more like a grimace) and a thumbs-up. Zim returned the gesture with a soldier-esque salute. Rebecca rolled her eyes and closed the door.

House spoke through a microphone into the MRI room. "Okay, please remove all, erm, _cranial _accessories, as well as any metal you may be wearing…" he began, "and…" He pressed a button. "…we begin!"

The platform Zim was on began slowly rolling into the machine. When he was securely inside the machine, House pressed another button and the machine turned on.

Suddenly, a muted but obvious scream came from the MRI.

House and Matt looked quite befuddled, so Rebecca quite forcefully reminded them of the situation with a loud "TURN IT OFF!!" Snapping out of his confusion, House turned the MRI off and threw himself threw the door and up to the machine, manually pulling the platform out.

The two younger humans followed him in, only to find an enraged Zim, teeth clenched, shaking a tad with the sheer force of his incident.

"YOU FORGOT. TO TAKE OFF. MY PAK."

Matt and Rebecca, quite relieved, sighed and rolled their eyes. "So that's all…" Rebecca commented.

"That's ALL?!" Zim yelled, sitting up. "I could have died had it been ripped from my back!! And you forgot to take it off when I went into a MAGNETIC MACHINE?!"

"WE forgot?" Matt countered. "You're the true-born Irken here, Zim! Not to mention that you were the one going into the machine. What went through your head when Dr. House said 'remove all metal accessories?'"

"A PAK is hardly an _accessory," _Zim notified him.

"Uh, excuse me if this is a bad time," House began tentatively, "but… what's a PAK?"

"Care to explain, Zim?" Rebecca cued him.

"A PAK," Zim began, "is an Irken's main life support system, encased in this thingy." He gestured to the round metal object on his back.

A look of horror and anger beginning to surface, House face-palmed. "I am your _doctor,_" he reminded them, agitated. "It would have been _quite nice _to have known that earlier."

The small green alien began to open his mouth defiantly, then closed it again.

"He's right, you know," Matt added.

There was a long silence, during which Dr. House folded his arms in front of him, quite satisfied, forever loving to be correct.

Zim sighed. "Admittedly, it was a little stupid to send you off trying to find out what was wrong with me without even understanding my anatomy."

"And," House added, "for future reference, something always goes wrong in the MRI…"

"Well, I didn't _know _that," Zim recoiled. "Anyway, how about we start this issue over again… with some extra information?"

"Huh?" Rebecca asked, not quite understanding.

"If I can hack back into my computer's database," Zim explained, "I can find you some important information on Irken anatomy."

[A/N: And there's the title!!]

"That sounds way smarter than I thought you were." House decided, smirking. A glare was returned from Zim. "No, really; do it. It makes more sense than anything else that's happened today."

"That's another thing," Rebecca began, confused. "How in the world do you believe us? I wouldn't; not if I was in your situation."

"Well…" House pondered, "first of all, you don't seem crazy. Except for lime-face."

Another glare from Zim.

"Other than that, I suppose I don't have an excuse."

"Well, you will," Matt informed House. "Take off your disguise, Zim. As long as he knows… he is, after all, your doctor."

Zim looked tentative on the subject. "You're not in with the FBI, are you?"

"Uh… no," The confused doctor replied.

"United Nations?"

"…No."

"CIA?"

"Well, I did go on a secret mission for them once, but no."

"Oh, ha…" Rebecca smiled.

"No, I'm serious," House said earnestly, eyebrows raised. "How come nobody ever believes me when I tell them that…?"

"Last but not least," Zim finished up, "do you PROMISE… you won't laugh?"

"No."

"No?"

"That's not something I can promise you."

Zim growled slightly, then proceeded to take off the wig. Then came the contact lenses. Then a few teary blinks and a mumble about how itchy those things were.

House simply stared, his face an expressionless boulder. After a few good seconds of this, Rebecca asked "Well?"

Words came slowly to the sarcastic doctor this time. "Red…" He sighed, struggling to find the words. "Red eyes… antennae… he's a _beetle."_

Matt laughed, realizing how true the statement was. Rebecca only blinked slowly, thinking, flashes coming to her mind of Norwegian furniture, walruses, hello's, and goodbye's.

[A/N: This is something that happens to me when I get reeeeaaaally tired, and after a day like this one, well… _beetle _can quite easily sound like _Beatle._]

After some mental sorting, she blurted out an "OOOOHHHHH." This attracted several curious glances from the others. "Nothing, just my brain… being… my brain…" she dismissed.

"Now that we've got that settled," Zim changed the subject, trying to hide his slight embarrassment at the comment, "I'll get the data." He hopped down from his place on the bench and went for his stuff, which was spread out on a table a few feet away.

"How are you going to get to it?" Rebecca said, although there was no doubt in her voice. If she knew Zim, he would get it; it was only a question of how.

"With…" Zim trailed off as he sorted through the various alien objects, "_This!"_ he said when he found what he was looking for. He turned around to show them…

An apple.


End file.
